MIAMI — It is a good thing that the people who make their living playing sports are exercising their social conscience. It’s almost as if there is a bit of guilt — making tens of millions of dollars for hitting or throwing or bouncing a ball — that must be atoned for by taking advantage of an outsized platform for something more important than endorsing a sneaker.
Colin Kaepernick reignited this movement in 2016 but didn’t invent it. His controversially kneeling during the national anthem to protest systemic social and racial injustice — a foretelling of the national protests in the summer of 2020 — was an echo.
It was an echo of Jackie Robinson. Of John Carlos and Tommie Smith raising fists during the anthem at the 1968 Olympics. Of Cassius Clay becoming Muhammad Ali to underline his conscientious objection to the Vietnam War.
You tell LeBron James to shut up and dribble and he says hell no and gets louder. More power to him.
Segue to the news of the week, the story that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had ordered his team to stop playing the national anthem before games. Then the NBA quickly overriding and saying all teams must play the anthem as part of the league’s long-standing policy.
These things are very much intertwined because, yes, we have reached a time in our history when, to some, to many, “The Star-Spangled Banner” has become polarizing. Controversial.
New Orleans coach Stan Van Gundy, formerly of the Miami Heat, agrees with Cuban.
“This should happen everywhere,” Van Gundy tweeted Wednesday. “If you think the anthem needs to be played before sporting events, then play it before every movie, concert, church service and the start of every work day at every business. What good reason is there to play the anthem before a game?”
The conversation is complicated and important to have as a country.
Cuban and Van Gundy feeling the way they do does not make them un-American.
Just as me supporting the playing of the anthem before games does not mean I cannot respect the view of those who feel differently.
In my neighborhood, on my street, about a third of the houses fly the American flag out front.
It doesn’t make them better Americans. Doesn’t imply that the non-flag homes are engaging in any sort of protest.
Van Gundy asked the question rhetorically (“What good reason is there to play the anthem before a game?”), but I would offer an answer.
Because it is tradition. Because it is an homage to the generations of our military who have stood for our freedoms. Because sports is about the only place where you do hear the anthem played. And because patriotism itself — “a sense of attachment to a homeland and alliance with other citizens who share the same sentiment” — is a good thing. A good feeling.
Gathering as one to cheer the home team (back when we could gather as one), and the feeling that one’s country is the ultimate home team — those things seem naturally simpatico to me.
But while I like the idea of the anthem at games as (ideally) a unifying thing, I also appreciate that this anthem, our anthem, is divisive to many.
Its author, Francis Scott Key, was a slave owner as he wrote the anthem. In its third verse, never heard sung at stadiums and arenas, he writes, “No refuge could save the hireling and slave, from the terror of flight and the gloom of the grave.”
It is very much a song born amid the great stain on American history, slavery.
I value an anthem played before games for its unifying potential, but understand why many abhor this anthem and would prefer “God Bless America” or something else be played.”
One is not always proud of one’s country or its leaders, of its past or direction. I understand and respect those who might feel the national anthem does not represent them and won’t at least until racial justice is realized. Until the United States at long last lives up to what begins the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...”
The sports-led debate over the national anthem is a healthy thing, but, for me, when I hear the anthem play and stand for it, I am standing for an imperfect nation, but for that ideal, and for the striving to rise to it.
We can all hear the national anthem and feel it as we wish, our hearts telling us how.
It’s a free country, after all.
